Prior to the Los Angeles Kings winning their first Stanley Cup, the Ottawa Senators apparently were taking care of some royalty of their own.

A few weeks ago, Pierre Dorion first mentioned on the radio that assistant GM Tim Murray was looking to get entry level contracts for Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Shane Prince done. After which, he acknowledged that the organization was hopeful that both would play in Binghamton next season. In listening to Dorion speak, I was left with the impression that it was not a matter of if these players would sign their ELCs, it was a question of when. (And somewhere, there’s an Anaheim Ducks fan reading this, thinking about Justin Schultz, and shedding a tear.)

After some noise that Pageau was close to inking his deal, the organization officially acknowledged that Pageau had signed his first professional contract last week. Well, now we may have to wait a few days for the organization to do the same with Prince since one of the former Ottawa 67s forward’s friends has tweeted him a congratulatory message for signing his ELC.

Now some of you may be wondering why Pageau and Prince, two members of Ottawa’s impressive 2011 NHL Draft, are eligible to play in the AHL next season while fellow classmen, Stefan Noesen and Matt Puempel, are not.

Thanks to a private agreement between the NHL and the CHL, specific guidelines have been developed with the most common misconception being that a Canadian junior product has to be 20 years of age before he’s eligible for play.

The NHL/CHL agreement states that a player with junior eligibility signed by an NHL team must be returned to his junior team if he’s not playing in the NHL. It is part of a deal that provides CHL money for players produced (sort of like the IIHF agreement between the NHL and European countries). The NHL agrees to send the teenagers back because CHL needs these players – its top players — to make money. If the CHL didn’t make money, they couldn’t produce players. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.

Specifically, the rule says that if a player played in junior before they were drafted by the NHL, then they have to either be 20 years old by Dec. 31 OR have played four years of junior in order to play in the minors. That second condition rarely comes into effect. It would only apply to players who began in the CHL at age 15.

It’s worth noting that junior players are also permitted to join an AHL organization once their junior team’s season is over. For example, Puempel joined Binghamton for nine regular season games last season once Peterborough’s concluded.

Since Puempel was born on January 24th, 1993 and only has three years of junior experience and because Stefan Noesen was born on February 12th, 1993 and shares the same amount of experience as Puempel, both players will be returned to their respective CHL teams should they not make Ottawa’s roster out of training camp.

Other News of Pithy Importance:

– Chris Phillips’ new aptly named “Big Rig Brewery” opens today. It’s located on Iris close to the Swedish embassy Ikea.

– Apparently Ondrej Pavelec, the starting goaltender for the Winnipeg Jets, is the target of KHL club SKA St. Petersburg. Now as an organization that has some goaltending depth and a need for a good defenceman, I would just hate for Pavelec, an impending RFA, to ink a pre-emptive one-year deal with a KHL club to avoid the possibility of a NHL work stoppage. (Note: Not really. Ottawa and Winnipeg match up nicely as possible trade partners.)

– The Ottawa Sun‘s Bruce Garrioch commented on Boston’s signing of Chris Kelly by saying, “If the Senators had brought Kelly back, they would have expected him to take a hometown discount, which would have been nothing close to the kind of deal he was able to get from Chiarelli.” To which, we can all respond in unison – thank fuck that they weren’t interested in that kind of contract.

– Finally, I believe Scott’s touching upon Filip Kuba’s future in a piece later this afternoon. Keep an eye out for that.